ashleyruderman asked: What is the purpose of the two finger latex "glove" that employees wear?

This is all speculative, since I haven’t been able to find any official statements from Google, but they’re called finger cots, and they’re generally used to protect books “from the skin’s natural oils, which can have corrosive effects over time.” Google Books also “autocorrects” the fingers of employees from page images, probably the rationale for the uniform pink color of the cots.

I suspect they also make it a little easier to turn the pages. Finger cots preserve more dexterity than the white cotton gloves used in special collections or the bulky rubber finger tips used to sort paper. A ”fingertip grip enhancer” like Sortkwik may leave a residue.

The British Library uses only, “clean dry hands,” to combat the tendency of gloves to “transfer dirt to the object being consulted, and to dislodge pigments or inks from the surface of pages.”

—Krissy